Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Peter Bleackley wrote:

> Staving Mark J Reed.:
>
> >That was my understanding as well.  But what about borrowings?  The
> >Japanese borrowed have the word "fan" (as in sports fan; actually, I've heard
> >"fanatiku" more often, but the short form is also used), and pronounce
> >it [p\an], and don't confuse it with "han".  That would seem to argue
> >for [h] and [p\] being different phonemes...
> >
>
> Of course, Japanese does give you the option of analysing it as [p\u_0an]
Only if it's pronounced that way, and if it's [p\an], it is'nt [p\u_0an].
[...] denotes actual pronunciation:  [t_hIp] and can be easily proved or
disproved (is it actually said like that? no? well, it's not [t_hIp]
then); /.../ denotes the underlying phonemic structure: /tIp/ and cannot
be proved or disproved but only supported by other data (the same phoneme
is found in 'stick', [stIk], but a different one is found in 'dip' [dIp],
so aspiration cannot be the primary distinction. 'Few' and 'view' are
distinguished by voice, so we have a voice distinction in consonants to
pack up the /t/ vs /d/.*

*For a standard phonemic analysis of standard English dialects; YMMV.

So it could be that in Japanese, [p\an] is /huan/. I have no idea if
anything's stopping that or not, though.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy

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